Science Fiction & Speculative Fiction
A Novel
A crumbling ancient Greek tale about a foolish shepherd's flight to a city in the clouds is the thread Anthony Doerr uses to stitch together three eras: the 1453 siege of Constantinople, a small Idaho town in our own time, and an interstellar ark carrying humanity's remnant toward a distant world.
In each, a lonely young person's fate turns on that fragile story surviving. Doerr, following his Pulitzer-winning All the Light We Cannot See, has written an unabashed love letter to books, libraries and the tenuous chain by which stories outlast their tellers.
The structure is intricate and occasionally demanding, but the payoff is a moving argument for continuity and care across centuries, and for literature as a lifeline in dark times. His prose is warm and image-rich, his optimism hard-won rather than naive.
For readers who want ambitious, tender, hopeful fiction with a speculative reach, it is a generous and rewarding epic about what we choose to preserve.
The book
Across three timelines, the 1453 siege of Constantinople, present-day Idaho, and a future spacecraft, Anthony Doerr follows a scattered cast bound together by a fragile ancient Greek text about a shepherd's journey to a utopian city.
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